After I left the office yesterday I went home and picked up Nat. I told her we are going to Aramex to pick up the PSP. She was like didn’t they say 8AM tomorrow? I was like whatever, they get the packages tonight, we camp at Aramex till they get them. I was like worse case we have a bunch of magazines that arrived at Aramex last week, we pick those up and read them while we wait. So we get to Aramex at 7PM and right as I am about to open the door of the car, Aramex call me. They tell me my package arrived and I can pick it up. I was like thanks, I am right outside! We pick up the PSP, park on the side of the road and we start tearing up the boxes. Luckily our PSP came with a starter kit which included a car power adapter.
We switch on the PSP, and first thing I start looking for are dead pixels (dots on the screen which don’t change color). There was a speckle of dust on the screen I tried to remove with my finger when I realized that the tiny speckle was a dead pixel. I was like this is it? For some reason I expected it to be bigger, but because the PSP screens pixels are very fine, a dead pixel is barely noticeable even when the whole screen is black. I ended up finding 2 dead pixels, one on the first row and one in the middle right of the screen. Both not noticeable even when looking for them.
We got the Spider Man 2 movie with the PSP so that was the first thing we played. I was totally blown away, the image was extremely clear, sharp and the colors very accurate. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I am no stranger to technology but the screen was like nothing I had seen before. I then put the game WipeOut Pure and let Nataly play till we got home. Once home we were able to try out the other games and get a better feel of the PSP.
My only disappointment is in the sound department. The built in PSP speakers are not good enough. I don’t know what I was expecting but I know I wasnt expecting speakers you would find on a gameboy. With the earphones on though you get totally immersed in the game.
The good things about the PSP? The screen definetly is the coolest thing, when lying in bed at night watching SpiderMan 2, for a brief moment with all the lights off you would think you lived in the future. Its like having a plasma screen that fit into your hand. The load times of the games were unnoticeable. On paper 10 seconds feels a lot but in reality its hardly noticeable, except for the game Tony Hawk were load times were longer then 10 seconds. The battery life was high, I spent 2 hours atleast playing with the PSP and then put the system on standby and today morning I checked and it was still at 90% charge. Also incase you have a spare battery swapping them is very easy.
In conclusion, as I mentioned on Miskan, there is no PSP vs DS war. The war is over. There really wasn’t a war to begin with. While the Nintendo DS is catering for under 18s the PSP is catering for people aged over 18. They are two different machines for two different groups. I will probably definitely get a DS but like my gamecube it will probably gather dust in the cupboard. Click here for a picture of my PSP with my PDA and phone.
For those of you who follow my 
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I am pro Sony PSP. I definetly think its a way cooler machine then the GameBoy DS which is big and clunky. The Sony PSP games are way cooler and the connectivity features of the PSP are also a lot cooler. In a recent comparison in WIRED magazine between the PSP and DS, the PSP ofcourse came out on top. But today I read an argument about the PSP that I found interesting. The PSP is better then the DS, we know that, but how much better it could have been is the issue here. 
Recently you might have noticed these ads on some buses advertising this restaurant called Wildfire. Well yesterday evening me and nat decided to pass by and give it a try. The place is located in Kuwait City in Mubarak Al Kabeer Street opposite the “Blockat” shops and the Chamber of Commerce building. The first impression wasn’t very good. The signage outside was in lime green and looked very cheap. When we got closer we saw the inside from the large window next to the door and the place looked small and like a hotel lobby with a small bar and small tables. Once we went in though we realized that it WAS actually a lobby / coffee shop for the restaurant which is located upstairs. Once we went in we were greeted with very friendly faces and led to the restaurant upstairs. When we reached the top we were once again greeted with smiles and they asked if we would like a private cabin. We said yes.. the first mistake. The restaurant on the inside is much bigger then i expected. Its clean, dimly lit and the furniture all new as it should be expected since the place just opened at the end of ramadan. The private cabin though was claustrophobic. The table was long and very slim like an oversized ironing table and the benches were very uncomfortable. It was also getting stuffy inside so we decided to keep the cabin door open. Then they brought us the menu which was the biggest surprise of the evening. Wildfire has simply the largest menu I have ever seen in Kuwait with nearly 200 dishes to choose from. Their menu has everything from extravagant cocktails and milkshakes to all types of dishes from Indian, Chinese and even Fish & Chips and Club Sandwiches. They even have lobster and crab for sea food lovers. The menu has 20 pages of everything you could imagine. We decided to have shrimp spring-rolls, kindu prawns, mongolian chicken and egg fried rice. We decided to skip the soup because weren’t that hungry but they did have shark fin soup which is usually my favorite. The shrimp spring rolls arrived first. They were too crunchy, had green peppers and weren’t very tasty. I hate green pepper in my food so my vote shouldn’t count here but nat doesn’t mind them and she also thought the spring-rolls were bland. The main course arrived soon after we finished. When he first put the food on the table I noticed the mongolian chicken was bright red. Thats the first time I see it like that, usually its dark brown, the kindu prawns also looked like normal prawns with a bit of light brownish sauce, again its not supposed to look like that. The food tasted as good as they looked, not very good. My mongolian chicken was not spicy at all and its supposed to be very spicy. Natalys kindu prawns tasted like normal prawns, the kindu part of it was tasteless. The rice was one of the worst I have tried, very boring in flavor and dry. We were very disappointed. The large menu led us to believe that we would keep coming back to try different things but after our meal we knew this would be the last time we would ever come back. The bill turned out to be 8KD, that also included 1 coke and 2 bottles of water. We left a 1KD tip and left. The waiters asked us how good the food was and I lied and told them it was great.. I couldn’t be bothered to explain why I didn’t enjoy the whole meal. The final score for the place is 3 out of 5. I would have given it 2 but the extremely large menu and the very friendly service helped raise the score. Maybe the Indian menu is better then the Chinese, maybe our dishes were not their speciality, whatever the case is, we didn’t enjoy our meal and we will most probably never go back. 
